Welcome to Ukraine where we're gonna learn as much as we can about this amazing nation that's filled with people like you and me
Ones with hope family and opportunity in mind, but before we get into the nitty gritty facts of Ukraine
I better introduce myself. How's it going? Everybody?
My name is Dave Walpole and welcome to FTD facts the channel where we look at people
Cultures and places from all around the world and now I'm excited to learn about Ukraine
I think it is a beautiful nation and it's got a lot going for it
Now that being said if you're new here on FTD facts and you want to learn about new countries and new places around the world
well
Hit that subscribe button and join us here every single Monday where we look at a new country from anyplace in the world
But with that I'll talk about that a little bit later because right now we got to talk about
Ukraine
Now probably the first and foremost question is how do you pronounce this country's name?
Is it Ukraine or is it the Ukraine? Well, that's that's actually just a really good question
So firstly if you were to say the Ukraine
You might get some people that are gonna look at you in a very negative way. It's actually pronounced, Ukraine
Now why would the be considered negative?
Well at one point Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and back then that's when people from other parts of Russia
Pretty much called Ukraine though, Ukraine, and now that it's its own independent nation
You probably should just call it Ukraine out of respect to the people who fought for their own
Independence. Am I right which by the way it was August 24th? 1991 when Ukraine got its own independence
And this was pretty much after the fall of the Soviet Union
Goodbye, Berlin Wall, but I find it very amazing how a three-letter word called th e could mean something so negative
Sometimes of course there might be some of you guys out there who are from Ukraine who are like now, it doesn't really matter
It's totally okay, but some people might be like ya know we are not the Ukraine
So Ukraine is also a very important country in all of Europe and I'm gonna get into some of those details shortly
But let's be real one thing that Ukraine has is a largely military
But more importantly it's a rather fertile country and I don't mean like, you know
The women are fertile, like they're dead knocked up and having babies all the time
As a matter of fact, that's a little bit. You know, I come it the opposite because they have a decreasing population
I mean like the country has very fertile soil but speaking of population
Let's look at how big Ukraine actually is in terms of population. It's it's at the 32nd largest country in the world
having a population of around
42 million four hundred and eighteen thousand two hundred and thirty-five people as of a
2017 estimate now. Like I said, it's a declining population because in
2001 the census stated that the country had about 48 million people within the country
So why the decline well?
first of all high death rates and low birth rates at one point Ukraine had its peak population at
over 52 million people in
1993 by the year
2016 its population had dropped to over 18 percent and with that in 2018. It was reported that there was approximately
11.1 deaths for every thousand people while only having 9 births for every thousand as well there have been losses of
Territories from conflicts like Crimea and Donbass that led to a population decrease and with that
I don't really want to get into the dark sides of Ukraine
I mean every country has its dark moments Canada the United States France. They've all you know had some terrible things happen to them
So I'm gonna skip that because while we're on the topic of size
Let's talk about land size
Basically the country sits at 45th roughly in the world coming in with a rough
Approximate land size of six hundred and three thousand six hundred and twenty-eight
kilometers square now there might be some people out there who might say that's not accurate because of territorial loss, but
Yeah, okay that that's true. Also currently Ukraine when it comes to sighs
It has two titles that make it a little bit confusing. First of all, it's the second-largest
European country
But with that it is the largest country that is wholly in Europe
Meaning that the whole country is within Europe
I mean Russia is big but not alo Russia is within Europe. There's you know the East which doesn't really count
Sorry, Russia, and like I said when it comes to this land it is
Extremely extremely fertile. How fertile is it? Well, they say over
56% of the entire land within the country is fertile soil on top of that
There's about 2% that is used for permanent crops and 13% used for permanent
Pastures and 18% of this is forest
And woodland while 9% is classified as other for worldwide arable land alone
It comes in at third in terms of country percentage
but it comes in at tenth in overall with a total arable size of
338 thousand six hundred and nineteen kilometers Square and you might be thinking with all of this arable land
What kind of stuff do they actually like?
Produce like vegetables that sort of stuff. Well the most profitable thing that they produce that is grown in the ground is
Sunflowers. Yes. I know. It seems weird who ever thought like the sunflower would be a really viable thing
Well, it's oil
for example
It's number one in the world for sunflower oil giving approximately four million tons of it a year
it's also the third exporter in the world for barley fourth for corn and sixth for wheat and
seventh for soybeans for its sunflower oil China is actually the biggest buyer of
This product also a little under 60% of the soybeans that come from the country are
under a company known as
Danube soya. Oh, yeah, and when it comes to the soil just so you guys know
Yeah, it's not only all over the place, but it's really thick some areas. It's like five feet thick
That is a lot a lot of black soy like I am five eight guys. Think about it
It's like my head is like I would be you know what I mean if I was planted into the ground
Considering we were on the topic of food. Did you know that Ukrainians came up with the idea of eggs for Easter?
Well, at least that's what they like to say
It's a bit of a bizarre thing to do during Easter now that we think about it
but it is known as
pysanka and back in the day instead of coloring them like we do now what they would do is cover them with wax resin and
Then dye them and although there have been fragments of these shells found in Poland from ancient times
No remains from these periods were found in Ukraine. That being said Ukrainians believed in des Beaux
Which was the Sun God and they decorated their eggs to that which actually kind of means the whole painting of an egg
Predates Christian rule. That's right. You could almost say it's a bit pagan. That's right. Sad Christians
During that time for Ukrainians birds were considered the chosen creature of the Sun God and during that time
Also humans could not catch birds and they honored them by taking their eggs
which meant rebirth of the earth or nature which also
Coincides with spring and that's kind of how the Christians were like, hey wait, they're doing this around the same time
we're just gonna take it and
It's with us now. Did you know that Ukraine was the first country to ever have an official?
Constitution that's right in today's world Ukraine is listed as a unitary semi-presidential
Constitutional republic meaning that it has a president and Prime Minister as a matter of fact
The president is voted for every five years and their Parliament is called
verkhovna rada
with over 450 seats
which means some of the
Decisions or most of the decisions within the government has to be approved by both the president and the Prime Minister and the cabinet
But back to this world's first constitution
It was known as the constitution of Philip Orlick, which was introduced in 1710
It was the first constitution
that also outlined rights of the government and its people which is kind of crazy because you know,
When you look at like Americans who are like, you know, that's our
Constitution but
Ukrainians are like well ours is really old and we've had to change it a couple of times because we know it's outdated
Yeah, considering we are on the topic of constitutions and governments
Let's talk about the Capitol for just a second known as Kiev
it has a population of 2.8 million people at least estimated following that there is
Kharkov
Which has 1.4 million people and Odessa with over 1 million people and although the city of love
you may come in at seventh-largest with a population of
730 mm. It's actually cafe capital of the entire country as they have over
1,500 cafes
that's insane and last but not least probably my favorite thing to talk about of every single country is how well
country's its culture and people
Preserve its own culture and traditions both culturally and naturally
I know I said culture a lot there
but you'll see why the reason for this is Ukraine is a country that has six cultural and
one natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites as a matter of fact love you city center is
considered one of these which has been around since the Middle Ages and it's not gonna stop there because
currently and I'm actually really surprised at this because Ukraine has
16 sites on the tentative list, which is really high
So you might see more UNESCO World Heritage Sites popping up in the next couple of years
Anyways, guys, that's it for me - Dave Walpole. Did you guys have fun learning about Ukraine now? Okay. Yeah
This has been a rather short video. You can't put everything into the video
And if you guys want a part - be sure to hit that like button with that if I missed any facts
Feel free to leave it down there
Because I love you guys if you guys are from Ukraine and you know
You want to teach some other people?
I would say look down in our comment section so you can learn something from some people who might be from there or have visited
from there and with that before you guys get out of here our next video we're gonna be talking about next Monday is going to
Be the great and beautiful country of Romania
So feel free hit that subscribe button and that bail
Notification and come back every single Monday that also being said you can check out the playlist right here guys
It's up above my head. It's also in the description box below
It'll be at the end of this video. But my name is Dave Walpole
Thank you guys for tuning in and hanging out with me and I hope you all had a beautiful time learning about Ukraine
See in the next video. Bye
Alright so you made it to the end of the video
Well here is that playlist I was telling you about if you want to also maybe just learn about some cool military stuff
We also do that as well
So there's military playlist just on military aspects of different countries, and there's just this stuff on the countries themselves. So check them out
We'll see you the next one. Bye